


XMFC/DOFP Porn Battle Entry (2015)

by Kernezelda



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Charles is Charlotte, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 15:29:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4925002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kernezelda/pseuds/Kernezelda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Erik/fem!Charles, Shaw/Erik, Shaw/fem!Charles, pregnancy, pregnant sex, dub-con, captivity, anal</p>
            </blockquote>





	XMFC/DOFP Porn Battle Entry (2015)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 2015-02-09  
> No betas were harmed in the course of this fic.  
> Characters herein belong to Marvel.

The other telepath—another!—sliced into Charlotte's mind before she could do more than cry out a warning; a devil appeared in a wreath of smoke on the deck of the Coast Guard ship, grabbed her, and threw her onto a carpeted floor. Charlotte groaned and clutched her head, nose filling with the odor of sulphur. She moved her fingers, pressing them to her temple until a strong hand jerked them away, jerked her up to her knees, to wavering feet, wrenching her shoulder horribly while nausea swirled in her stomach, esophagus, mouth, spilling out even as her brain felt as if it were splitting in two.

Disgust and laughter lanced into her mind and ears. Her eyes blinked against tears of pain and there were hands on her, turning her regardless of the slurring protests she began to force past sour bile, staring bewildered at faces spinning past her, a blue-eyed woman in not-much-white, a man in black—a wetsuit?—immobile on the floor beside her—the devil—no such thing, a man, had to be a man, the mutant she'd seen in Moira's mind—a dark-haired man in a suit, and behind them whirling into view as she spun, Shaw, Shaw whom she’d been seeking, whom she’d seen in Moira’s mind--Shaw stood and watched and smiled beatifically.

Charlotte clenched her teeth and pulled her shields back together, ignored her physical state to gain control of her mind, whipped out tendrils of _STOP_ in every direction. The hands fells away, and she fell back to her knees, and to her vast relief, no one was moving but her. Until crystalline palms smacked her cheeks one-two one-two and a crystalline foot slammed into her shoulder, tumbling her backward onto the man on the floor.

"Thank you, my darling," said Shaw—Schmidt, she heard in German voices, Shaw superseding with an American accent—to the woman, whose skin transformed gorgeously until she shone like diamond, until it refracted light from the overheads into glittering spears aimed at Charlotte's eyes, her brain. She couldn't... She couldn't push them back, couldn't get her shields into place, every attempt rebuffed until she was reeling, dizzy.

"Another telepath," said the woman, cool as ice. "Strong. But she's not a trained fighter."

Shaw stroked a palm from gleaming shoulder to elbow. "Excellent work. Lock her down, and have her put in the playroom." He paused, snapped his fingers, gaze darting with cold avarice to the man whose body lay beneath Charles. "Have Erik taken there, too."

Charlotte blinked slowly, frantically drawing the shattered remnants of her defenses together. She focused on preparing her own assault, gathered the fear and outrage, the terror buffeting her mind, and _slammed_ it like an iron pike into the crystalline, seamless globe protecting the other telepath. She _felt_ the impact, saw the woman stagger—and a boot neatly clipped Charlotte on the jaw, dropping her into a fear-filled abyss.

*

Her mind surfaced in one sluggish wave after another, awareness building and fading and building again. Sound first, skin slapping on skin, meaty thuds, a hoarse voice—male—crying out. German, maybe Polish, or Yiddish—Charlotte couldn’t tell. But the voice was in pain, and there were others, jovial, contemptuous, urging, and Shaw’s softer among them, coaxing, “My boy, you’ve come home…”

The air was dry with a faint smell that Charlotte didn’t recognize. She became desensitized to it quickly as she noted the stronger scent of a cleansing agent under her nose where she lay face-down on what seemed to be a floor. The fibers felt like high-quality carpet, confirmed when she blinked herself into coherent vision. She… she could see chair legs, but the sounds came from behind her. If someone was watching her, if she moved, they’d know she was awake. Charlotte tested her muscles as subtly as she could; despite the vast headache beginning to make itself known, she slowly, slowly turned her head toward the source of the pained grunts, the rhythmic smacking, the low, amused words of praise.

And she could feel…

Ugh, her shields had been blown to pieces, leaving her exposed to every passing thought, any strong emotion in her vicinity. Which was not a small area; but three, four minds worked actively close to her, and sorting them out was made only more difficult because—God—the emotional distress flooding her mind blocked every attempt to push it out, washed through Charlotte until she couldn’t tell what was her and what was—

One arm under her, Charlotte bit back a gasp as agony shot through her lower body; as surreptitiously as possible, she took in the room. The woman in white appeared nowhere, but the other men were all huddled over a dark shape on the floor—narrowing her eyes resolved it into the man in the wetsuit—and likely the man whose mind had first drawn her attention out on the water. Charlotte realized what was happening. She clamped her teeth together to prevent the return of nausea, mouth still gummy with residue from her arrival. If Shaw’s words were fatherly, his actions in no way reflected such.

The man lying between Shaw’s spread legs with arms trussed up over the cut-open remnants of the wetsuit, the leggings slit and flapping around his thighs, that man’s eyes were open, but dull and blind as glass beads, with as little life behind them. Blood dripped from his nose, and when Shaw reared back, laughing as he took a glass of amber liquid from his dark-haired associate, red spattered across the bare thighs beneath him. All the while, that powerful mind blared out distress so loudly that Charlotte still wasn’t able to block it out, separate it from her own attempt at self-assessment; it was certainly one of the causes of the headache racking her poor, aching brain, as well as the physical symptons, aside from a sharp throbbing just above and forward of her left ear. Not to mention the terror bubbling at the back of her mind, or the bile-inducing apprehension of what might come.

Charlotte couldn’t bear to look at that poor man’s empty eyes any longer, not when she’d felt his mind earlier, vibrant and intense, electric in the night. Keeping her motions slow, she began to skim her hand closer to her head, at the same time wriggling the one askew beneath her body, trying to work feeling back into it. Plush carpet fibers brushed the pads of her fingertips as she moved her free hand—slowly, slowly—keeping her arm as low as possible, out of view from the men, occupied though they were with their prey.

It seemed to take hours, but she finally had her forefinger against her temple, could feel the rough breaks in her shields, could anticipate the effort it would take to repair them from the other telepath’s attack. Once she got her defenses in order, she could free herself and the other prisoner. Any plan beyond that would have be formulated on the move.

A high-pitched yelp distracted her.

Oh. _Oh._ Charlotte quickly turned away, wishing she hadn’t seen. Hadn’t felt the desperately unwelcome touch, the attempt to suborn the man’s own physiology.

Shaw had the man’s pelvis raised up, one hand reaching around while he gripped an already-bruising hip with the other. Tightly-bound wrists twisted until they bled, and curses gritted out between clenched teeth blurred together: German and French, Spanish and English, every one promising death, revenge. Charlotte didn’t need to understand the words to understand their meaning.

The scent of hot metal hung in the air: blood, followed by muskier odors, skin and arousal and semen, reminiscent of an Oxford boy’s dorm, but without the pleasant associations.

Charlotte had to ignore what was happening. Had to focus on what she was doing inside of her own head, laboriously dragging ragged panels of her shielding back into place, until it grew easier, until enough pieces clung together to make the others easier to affix. And then, expert at her own mental structure, Charlotte slotted her shields firmly around her mind.

_Blessed relief._

Now, without her fellow prisoner’s pain distracting her, Charlotte could peek into the minds of their captors, determine their location, the location of the other telepath, could _stop_ them. Gingerly, she pushed up to her knees, grabbed the arm of a chair to shove herself upright, finger straining with the pressure she applied, stabbing it into her forehead as she gathered her weapons: the emotional turmoil in the room, the physical pain of the rape, the accumulated bruises of both the man and herself.

The devil—the red-skinned mutant turned at her motion, but she froze him in place without a word spoken. Shaw’s head began to swivel toward her. “Riptide,” he snapped, barely pausing the heavy, pummeling pace of his hips. A wind rose in the room. Charlotte grabbed at the table with her free hand, but the wind strengthened, began swirling around her, tugging at her clothes, at her hair, tearing louder and louder as it-as it sucked the air from her lungs, a visible tornado now as she tried to split her attention between the mind she already held and the one attacking her.

A cushion from the couch whipped itself into its own whirling flight across the room, the localized windstorms merging while Charlotte finally grasped the foreign mind, Spanish—and forced the idea of _STOP_ past the language divide. But by that time the cushion had knocked her finger loose, plastering itself across her face, her nose, her mouth, and in the shock of it she lost her hold on the other.

The pillow clamped down hard, fingers digging into the sides of her head, pressing down on the lump already on one side, and when it lifted a fist replaced it.

*

Charlotte screamed her way to consciousness—to revolted awareness of a cock up her ass and another deep in her mouth, and without even a second's thought, she bit down hard, struck out physically and mentally both—except she couldn't do either because her hands were bound behind her back and her mind slammed back against itself as if she’d run into a brick wall; and even as the man screamed in wrenching agony her head was punched down to bounce painfully against a hard surface, and the old blood in her mouth doubled with new as her teeth rattled in her skull.

*

Charlotte woke to a dry hand stroking disordered hair away from her forehead, to a face hot with swelling flesh, to an ache in her jaw and in her throat, to others clamoring from other parts of her, down to a red-tinged sensation of burning, of torn flesh in a part of her completely unused to such. And a complete absence of mental voices, not even the low hum of a living brain.

"Calm," said a voice from above and beside her; presumably, it belonged to the large hand soothing—it felt soothing—her brow. "We're both trapped here."

When Charlotte could unstick gummed eyelids enough to see, she pulled away abruptly; the man was naked. After a split-second, she saw that she was, too. Her head ached abominably, and felt strangely heavy—and fingers raised to touch discovered a metal sheath, some sort of helmet molded around her head, curved under her throat so it couldn't be pulled free. No latch, no buckle, it was all of a piece.

"Who are you?" Charlotte gave up on what she couldn't affect, uneasily crossed her arms across her bare bosom and drew her knees up, pressing her back to the wall where she sat at the head of a thin-padded cot—wide enough for two, and the only furniture in the tiny room—in a ship's cabin, she surmised, from the single round porthole and the undulation of a vessel on water. A slim door stood open, revealing a toilet and sink and tiny, tiny shower. The only other door looked to be the cabin door proper. “Are we locked in?” It was barely a question at all, toneless.

"Erik Lehnsherr," said her cellmate, from between lips bruised and puffy, and staring at her with eyes that would be beautiful if they hadn't both been blacked, swollen until only slits remained for him to peer through. “Yes.”

Beneath the bruises littering his flesh, he was as healthy a specimen of manhood as she'd ever seen, and _Christ,_ now was not the time. A fast curl of his lip meant—she didn't know. Without her telepathy, Charlotte was completely rubbish at reading people, although life with Raven should have given her more expertise in interpreting expressions, extrapolating from a body whose mind was closed to her.

"Do you know why we're still alive?" Presumably, Shaw had some reason, but nothing that Charlotte could immediately reason out. She turned her attention to her companion, trying to push aside the helplessness she felt, trying not to keep poking fruitlessly at the void where minds should be. Even the man before her gave off nothing, more closed away than an animal, as if he were dead, or a mere facsimile of a man, a ghost or illusion created by her own growing desperation. She kept her eyes on his face and her arms around herself, unwilling to let her nerves get the better of her.

"Do you know what Schmidt wants?" countered Lehnsherr. His face was a frozen mask, despite the awkward gentleness of his earlier touch.

"To benefit from an arms race, is what we believe," Charlotte replied. She kept her voice even, relying on years of practice in responding to words instead of thoughts. She refused to give in to the sense of distortion, of isolation, of physical discomfort. Lehnsherr was right there; he was alive and able to converse, so they would.

Lehnsherr raised an eyebrow. Charlotte pushed forward. "I'm working with the CIA." She held his stare. "I'm like you. I felt your mind earlier, when the other telepath was torturing you."

If anything, he tensed even further. "You're a-what _she_ is."

"Like her? Personality-wise, not a bit of it. But a telepath, yes. A mutant, like you. I saw what you tried to do with the anchor. You have a beautiful mutation." Charlotte barely stopped herself from babbling to fill the mental silence. She bit her lip as he grimaced and pushed himself to his feet, stepping as far away as the cabin's small width afforded.

"What do you know about me?" he spat out, thin lips pulling back from a quantity of white teeth. His hands fisted defensively.

Charlotte shook her head. "Almost nothing." _Not nearly as much as I should._ Her power, once she'd recognized it for what it was, had become her first and greatest defense. Forewarned was forearmed, a lesson she'd learned quite early on under her step-family's demanding and brutal tutelage. She stared up at Lehnsherr. "Except that you apparently want Shaw as badly as we do. And I presume, that you'd also quite like to get out of this wretched prison." She lifted an eyebrow.

Lehnsherr nodded. "On that, we agree. But that woman—that _telepath_ did something to my ability. I can't touch the metal here, I can't even feel it." He lifted his hands as if he were trying to draw the door to him by sheer force of will.

Charlotte cast about the cell for anything she might try to use to force the lock, or to pick it—a skill she'd learnt from Raven at a young age and had not found much cause to use in more than a decade. But the cell was empty save for the cot and prisoners.

Eventually, Lehnsherr gave up his attempts to burn a hole through the door with his eyes, and slumped on the foot of the cot. He seemed disinclined to converse further, turning aside Charlotte's attempts with dull grunts until finally she subsided, letting her head loll back as she stared at the grey metal of the ceiling.

In the silence of the cabin, the silence within her own mind became even more overwhelming. There was no one, no intelligence near her, no mind, no soul to touch—and her mind _hurt_ as her thoughts whirled in circles, faster and faster— _what about Raven and Moira? The CIA? Do they know where I am? **I** don't know where I am... If I can get this helmet off, can I fight the other telepath now that I’ve seen some of what she can do? Can we free ourselves? We have to try... What if there is no we? What if it's just me, and that woman is playing with my mind? I have to get it off, I need to be able to **see—**_

Hands grabbed her own, and a voice roughly grated against her ears, blocking out the frantic whispers, the voice of madness—

"It's all right," said that rough voice, "It's all right, you're not alone." Charlotte opened her eyes to see Lehnsherr at close range, peering into her face with a furrowed brow, eyebrows creasing together. "I'm real, we both are, pull yourself together." He sounded annoyed, worried, uncertain, as if dealing with a crying woman was not within his set of skills. It was definitely not how Charlotte ever saw herself, and she drew herself upright, embarrassed and grateful for his dragging her out of her own skull.

"He _is_ real," she told herself, and registered the feeling of his hands on her shoulders, the warmth and callouses of his fingers and palm, the size of him hovering, on both knees beside the cot. She found herself totally unafraid of him, and for the first time, noted details of his appearance beyond the bruises on his face and body. And winced, feeling anew the pain between her own legs as she saw a dried bloodstain curling around his thigh from the back, remembered what she’d seen. He must have lain face-down for some time, her brain calculated, and then she noted the blood _on_ his cock, a ring of dark welts—and she jerked away, eyes widening and hands balling up into fists to hammer at his arms, his face, all of him too fucking close, when she distinctly remembered biting down on the cock that battered her throat...

Lehnsherr backed off, confusion in his face, wariness, re-assessment. "What the _hell?"_

"You stay away from me!" Charlotte curled herself up as tight as possible, hooked her fingers into claws. "You—" Words failed her, her rage and fear incandescent.

Lehnsherr caught her gaze flicking downward at his crotch, and his eyes widened. "I don't—I didn't—" He stammered, and his acting skills were apparently as extraordinary as his mutation, because without her own mutation in play, Charlotte couldn't for a second divine any falsity in him; she'd let him comfort her, had spoken with him as with a rational human being; and all the while...

The door lock rasped with the sound of a key being turned. Lehnsherr cried out and dropped to the floor, hands flying to his skull to squeeze tightly. The woman in white stuck her inside and smiled with all the grace and kindness of a polar ice cap. "Sugar," she addressed Charlotte. "Sebastian's ready for your interview." Ice-blue eyes raked over Charlotte's body, and a cutting smile curved her lips. "But I have a feeling, there's definitely a position for you in our organization."

Numbly, Charlotte climbed to her feet. "Clothes," she gritted out. "I'd like my clothes back at once." Not that the other wore so much, but it was hard to maintain one's resolve while naked.

"Call me Emma," _Emma_ said, and then tsked. "No need." She crooked a finger. "Come along now, my dear. Or do you prefer to be forced?" Insinuation played along the lift of her eyebrow, the crook of her lips, and Charlotte tried to repress a shudder. She cast a glance at Lehnsherr, skirting past his prone, shivering body.

"He'll be joining us when Sebastian's ready," Emma said, sniffing. "Maybe this time, he'll be better-behaved."

"What do you mean?"

Slender hips in white swayed past Charlotte, leading down a narrow, dank corridor. "Sebastian doesn't want me to break him in all at once." Emma tossed her hair. "He wouldn't even let me keep him awake for the little floorshow earlier." She turned when Charlotte stopped short, put a hand on her waist and, for God’s sake, _pouted_. "Oh, honey, that boy hasn't touched a woman since his wife died, couldn't even get it up until I persuaded him otherwise."

Blue eyes twinkled. "But I expect you'll both change your tunes shortly."

Charlotte’s mind whirled with the new information; with the possibility that Lehnsherr hadn’t raped her, but had been used by the other telepath; then again, Emma—if that was even her name—could be lying. Nothing could be taken at face value, not without Charlotte’s telepathy to verify anything she was told, anything she saw or sensed. On the other hand, a hypothesis could be formed that if she could not use her own telepathy while wearing the helmet, it might equally well block the other woman’s use of her own against Charlotte. In which case, what Charlotte saw, what she perceived, could well be reality.

In which case, the reptilian grin on Sebastian Shaw’s face when she followed Emma into a white-themed sitting room, when she lifted her chin and forced her arms to her sides rather than cringe in her nakedness and bruises and bloodstains, was a real expression which she’d quite like to slap away as hard as she could.

“My dear Miss Xavier,” he said, appreciative and leering, “I daresay you’ve never looked better.” He stood at a liquor cabinet next to a short bar, preparing drinks—five of them, filling flutes with champagne that sparkled prettily after it frothed upward.

“I anticipate great things from you,” Shaw continued, handing a drink to Emma, giving her a slow smile before locking his eyes on Charlotte, roving slowly up and down, making her feel even more naked and filthy than she already did. “And from Erik.” He lifted his eyebrows. “Your cellmate,” he clarified. “At least until the results come in.”

What? “Results?” Charlotte pressed her lips together. She’d meant to maintain a stony silence.

Emma thumbed a button on the wall near a door at one of the room; a room, Charlotte noted, which curved, appearing almost concave; it was unlike any ship’s cabin she’d ever seen before. A bell rang out, hollow and flat. Emma took her champagne and settled onto a white-leathered couch, crossing her legs and lounging comfortably. Seconds later, two men—one the devil, no, the mutant with the appearance of a devil who’d taken Charlotte from the Coast Guard vessel—entered, and Charlotte’s entire skin flushed. They folded themselves into chairs set at the bar, and four sets of eyes examined her, until it was all she could do not to scream or break down or turn to flee. 

“Miss Xavier, you’re an intelligent woman.” Shaw smiled indulgently. “Graduate of Harvard University at 16, _four_ degrees from Oxford, and even sought out by the CIA for your expertise in genetic science.” He shook his head, looking as impressed and proud as if he had found a rare diamond among piles of coal. “And yet, with all of your gifts, still you have to hide your most impressive ability, or else you’d be relegated to a dissection table or forced to play the experimental laboratory rat for any government scientists who chanced to discover your secret.”

Charlotte shook her head, but Shaw only moved to settle at Emma’s side, wrapping his free arm around her. “Emma here took a quick peek through your memories; and later, if she decides you can be trusted, she’ll show you her own quite different experience as a budding telepath.” He sighed heavily, regretfully. “But until then, until you’re ready to participate willingly in our plans, I’m afraid we’ll have to do things the hard way.”

All this time, he’d spoken to her as if she wasn’t naked, wasn’t a prisoner… hadn’t been raped. But now, the cold lack of light in his eyes, the darkness she felt viscerally even without her telepathy—rolled outward like a cloud of stinking malice. “Boys, enjoy your new toy, but do remember we need to keep her in good—in _relatively_ good—health.”

Charlotte’s back slammed into the door behind her. Shaw turned away, offered his arm to Emma, who took it with a smile and leaned into his kiss. The other two, nameless and silent, left their emptied drinks and rose to bracket Charlotte, herding her inelegantly, forcing her further into the room while Shaw and Emma neatly passed them and exited, neither looking back.

*

They didn’t call each other by name; therefore, Charlotte had nothing with which to identify them save their bodies, their hands, their faces and tongues and cocks that licked and thrust, shoved and twisted; she was on her belly and on her face, with semen dripping from her cunt and her ass; she was on her knees with a thick red cock bruising the back of her throat and a whipcord tail pulling her wrists tight together; she hiccupped breathlessly while hot tears clogged her eyes, sour spittle and come drooling from her mouth as she was folded down until her joints ached and her muscles burned, with bruises in the shapes of fingers rising from throat to thighs to calves, skin worn red and swelling in rings around her wrists and throat where someone’s tie had tethered her neck to her crossed ankles, arching her backward until her spine creaked while she was fucked at both ends.

They fucked Charlotte until she could no longer distinguish one set of hands from another, one cock from the other, until there was no part of her that hadn’t been violated; until she lay limp and staring, splayed where she’d been discarded with semen drying in her hair and on her face, between her legs and down her thighs, smeared across her breasts and red-pinched nipples, hand-prints and crescent bites, blue and purple and lurid red splayed across her body like a Pollock.

*

Lehnsherr cleaned her up with a hand towel and a plastic pitcher of tepid water. She said nothing, and he didn’t try to initiate conversation. Charlotte didn’t have the energy to insist upon making her own ablutions; what was the point, anyway?

The next time the cabin door opened, he helped her stand, until she could master herself, the pain in her bones and ligaments, muscles and joints and skin that burned and itched like ants running under the skin. Even so, even though Lehnsherr’s physical aid would have been so very good to have—Charlotte raised her head high and limped after Emma. Set her unsteady steps on a forward course and tried not to stagger, far too aware of Lehnsherr on her heels, the black-haired man behind him, and the devil following closely.

*

“Tell me about your sister.” Shaw leaned back, arms spread along the back of the couch. A warm smile widened his lips while his eyes twinkled with sadistic pleasure. He politely withdrew his cock enough to clear Charlotte’s mouth. Behind her, Lehnsherr’s free hand dragged her head back by the hair, baring the long length of her throat, thoroughly marked and still swollen, making every breath burn. He was otherwise frozen in place, impaling her like a statue according to Emma’s dictates, her metaphorical fingers wearing grooves in his brain.

Charlotte stared dully up at Shaw until his words registered. Her eyes flew wide. “I don’t—” She coughed, hacked against the raw tissue. “Don’t have a sister.”

“Tsk.” Shaw shook his head. “It’s not nice to lie, Miss Xavier.” He shoved his cock back in, pumped his fist along its spit-wet length, rubbed the head over the inside of her cheek, pushing it out and patting its outline with his other hand. His smile was slimy and greedy, his taste clean and salty as he spurted little driblets against the roof of Charlotte’s mouth. She gagged and finally swallowed around him, hating the way he shivered with pleasure, hating him as much she’d ever hated a human being, step-family included. Kurt Marko hadn’t cared what Cain did to Charlotte, so long as she shone brightly in all her studies, an intellectual genius he could put on display as he never could his own son.

Shaw praised Charlotte’s intelligence with much the same condescension, that of a master with a potential-rich pet, if only he could coax it into obedience.

Panting a little, he shoved his cock a little further in, so that Charlotte could feel the soft underside of her jaw being pushed outward, deformed, her tongue flattened and her airway blocked.

“Tsk,” Shaw said again. “We’ve done our homework, Miss Xavier. She’s a shape-shifter, and an ability like that could be an enormous asset to our cause.”

Charlotte choked. Her face grew hot, reddening as she fought for air. Shaw sighed, and came down her throat, Lehnsherr holding her in place so she had no choice but swallow and swallow again until it was down her gullet, sliding unwelcome into her stomach. Shaw waited until Charlotte vocalized to his satisfaction before withdrawing, softening, smearing saliva and come across her lips. He reached down and set his forefinger along the soft curve of Charlotte’s lower lip, rubbed it back and forth. “If you two are close, I suspect she’ll do anything I ask to spare you this.”

*

Six weeks. At least, that’s what the marks scratched into the wall of the cell told Charlotte. If she hadn’t missed a day. The only light came from the single overhead bulb, inset into the ceiling and beyond reach, unless Lehnsherr should hold Charlotte on his shoulders, and neither of them could think of any escape scenario able to utilize simple darkness, not with a telepath on guard each time the door opened. Not when they were on a submarine miles out of the way, parked and waiting for Shaw’s perfect moment.

Six weeks. Of assault. Of rape, singly or doubly or more. Erik had suffered as much as Charlotte; more, as neither Shaw nor his thugs hesitated to beat him at any sign of resistance, defiance. Charlotte was at a loss to explain the lack of overt violence toward herself, unless it was the personal history between Shaw and Erik; six weeks had provided plenty of time for them to exchange histories. Erik had gradually revealed his unpleasant past with Shaw, formerly Schmidt, as vile in his time with the Nazi regime as he remained to this day.

This day, when Emma had escorted Charlotte to Shaw’s private lavatory, and handed over ten pregnancy test kits. “For accuracy’s sake,” she’d smirked, tapping one of the boxes with her long, lacquered nails. “Don’t make me bring the boys in.”

This day, when Charlotte found herself sitting listless and sightless on the toilet, the results possibly inconclusive, but most likely and horribly correct: eight out of ten tests could still be wrong, couldn’t they?

*

At the celebratory orgy, Emma reclined at her leisure on the couch, kicked up a heel over Riptide’s shoulder as he licked into her, while she wrapped her lips and hands around Azazel’s eager cock, the contrast of snow-white skin and holly-red lips against purple-red as obscene as anything Charlotte had ever seen.

Shaw pressed a fond kiss to Charlotte’s breast, flicked her nipple back and forth until she stopped staring past his shoulder and looked at him. He smiled at her with his white teeth and smug gaze as he tugged her on top of him. Perfunctorily, Charlotte reached for his eyes, chewed nails ragged. He laughed and batted her lightly away, into Erik’s waiting arms, and snugged her hips down to grind against him. It took no time at all for him to slide inside her, come-slick as she was, and he swallowed her groan with a smooth kiss. He tasted of champagne, of strawberries; his cock was solid and hot.

“Just think of it,” he murmured, hateful and seductive and poisonous. “A world of mutants, of your sons—and you must give us sons, my dear, to enable our population to spread quickly. You, and your sister, Emma and any other of our women who choose wisely to volunteer, you’ll be the mothers of a new world order.”

His breath was hot on her cheek. His eyes were endless wells of madness and decay. 

Charlotte stopped listening, turned her head. She let her mind sink down deep when Erik slid against her, slotting in alongside Shaw until she felt breathless, unable to move, pinned like a butterfly; but both of them were: Erik’s thickness inside her directed by Emma’s programming, Erik’s dry eyes empty, his thoughts locked away, his words silenced, his self drowned.

Not for the first time, Charlotte prayed to a god she didn’t believe in, prayed to any deity at all, that the child would be Erik’s, who, underneath his hardness, retained some small glimmer of humanity; she’d felt it in his hands when he comforted her, when he allowed her to comfort him, when they slept huddled together in their cell.

Beyond the ghastly confines of Shaw’s submarine, Raven had eluded his people all this time. She was safe. The CIA was surely still seeking Shaw. Even here, he must at some point grow careless, or Emma might be sent away long enough for her control over Erik to lapse, enabling him to free Charlotte from the thrice-damned helmet.

Shaw’s beloved vision couldn’t come to pass. Wouldn’t, if Charlotte could stop it. She decried violence as a first solution, but the time for words had long since passed. She’d kill him if she had to; wipe his foul mind from living memory if she could.

Shaw could be fought; he could be defeated.

Charlotte believed that. She refused to give up hope, despite Erik’s sneers, despite the circumstances presently beyond their control.

She had to believe in a future where Shaw’s mad scheme failed; she had to.

It was the only way to survive.


End file.
